


forever now unsaid

by ridasverkisto



Category: Original Work, 나 혼자만 레벨업 | Solo Leveling (Webcomic)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Its not really in actual Drabble format but that’s okay, Nonbinary Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28621893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ridasverkisto/pseuds/ridasverkisto
Summary: A collection of drabbles based around a Solo Leveling RP/Campaign that I’m currently DM-ing. More to get scenes out of my head and onto paper, and is thereby mostly divorced from Solo Leveling canon.
Relationships: Moss/Milo/Noah





	1. Chapter 1

Ross will be the first to admit that he’s no saint. He’s ever been the one to achieve his goals by any means necessary—and when your goal is the protection of your home, of your loved ones...well. There’s very little he won’t—that he _hasn’t—_ stooped to.

_Mark my words, boy, that will be your undoing one day._

He can almost hear Marianne’s words, echoing in his ears from years ago. Strict, sensible, but oh so tender in the end, Marianne had been. She’d been the best mentor he could’ve ever asked for, even as her soft heart had blinded her.

He won’t delude himself—he’d never been the favorite as her successor. No, that’d been Elias, playing the sweet, competent boy that she’d long desired to succeed her. Elias, whom she’d doted on, nurtured near from birth. Elias, who was as good as her son.

Elias, who had poisoned her with his own two hands and a smile on his traitorous face.

Ross can admit that being so constantly passed over had stung, so badly. All he’d ever wanted was for Marianne to _see_ him, to praise him for his efforts, to say she was proud. But he’d been equally headstrong and hot-tempered, turning angry and bitter that Marianne couldn’t see what he saw in Elias.

Couldn’t see the power hungry, conniving, lying _bastard,_ who would speak honeyed words into your ear while he slid a poisoned knife between your ribs. But Elias was far too good at playing his part, and Marianne too invested in the mask he gave her.   
It was the death of them both, in the end.

When he’d realized what Elias had done, about to be placed as the head of the Association, turning that cruel, smug smirk on him in that room—

He’d _known_.

Elias would’ve done naught but used everything Marianne had built for his own gain, ruining it in the process. Pulling it apart piece by crumbling piece in his hands.

So he’d done what he’d had to. Secretly, quietly.

It’d been an accident, he’d said. The Raid had been terrible, and it’d been so _easy_ to mask what he’d done behind the monsters.

Elias’s lifeblood had been so _warm_ over his hands, slick as an oil spill. No one had ever known that he’d been the one to slit his fellow student’s throat.

_(”I’d—always thought you’d—ah, be the one to...to kill me.”_

” _Whatever’s necessary.”_

_”Ahaha! That’s—whatever’s necessary. You’ve killed one monster, Rossy.” The flash of bloodstained teeth and wild, manic eyes. “But you became one yourself, did—aghk, didn’t you know?”)_

No one had questioned his all too real grief as he took his place as the leader of the Association.   
But now—well. Now that he has Sonia, he can only imagine what Marianne had felt, all those years ago, watching him and Elias.

Had she felt as proud as he does, watching them grow just as he watches Sonia? That fierce warmth, that desire to see them flourish?

Is this what she’d felt that had blinded her so to Elias’s flaws? Maybe, if only—if only he’d convinced her, gathered evidence, proved his own side of the story.

But those regrets are years old, now. She’s gone, and Elias, alongside his sister and parents.   
Ross has only one tie to this earth, yet; Sonia, young and bright and warm, headstrong and so damn reminiscent of Marianne that it makes his heart ache like acid in an open wound.

_Would you like her, I wonder? Little Sonia and her grandmaster Marianne, taught by the lesser of your two pupils._

Ross sighs, turning away from the window, away from the snow falling past the window. Winter always makes him melancholy. With a deep breath, he pulls away from the desk, strength flowing through his limbs as easily as it had so many years ago. His regrets are like ghosts, following him around and whispering doubts into his ears.

He can only hope that Sonia won’t have so many, when he passes the mantle to her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific tags: implied child neglect/abuse, but nothing explicit.

Rosalie Bailey is the picture perfect example of sweet, demure, and pretty. She’s slim, and wears everything her mother demands of her with grace and poise.

Rosalie is crisp, pressed, and pretty. Sugar and spice and everything nice. Teatimes and slender fingers and dresses.

Rosalie is everything that’s ever been asked of her. But it’s never enough.

———

Her mother is sharp, and strict, and cold.   
“Chin up, Rosalie,” she says, blue eyes sharp. “You do not slouch.”

Rosalie straightens the barest bit, tilting her chin back into that portrait ready poise. Her mother hums.

“Better. Now—try again.”

Rosalie does. Her feet are clumsy and young, though, and quickly her knobbly knees send her tripping over her feet, the books on her head landing with a great clatter on the floor. Her knees and palms smart, stinging with pain.

“Get up,” her mother snaps, as Rosalie looks up at her. “Try again.”

Rosalie does.

—————

Meeting Milo is, though she doesn’t know it, perhaps the best thing to ever happen to her.

“Do you want to eat lunch with us?” he asks, young and wide-eyed and innocent. He gestures to where his friend—dark skinned and darker eyed—stares back at her. “Please?”

Her lunches are small, filled with the only sorts of food her mother approves of—salads and rice, in portions that leave her still itchingly hungry after she’s finished. She’s not supposed to talk with boys, according to her mother, but—

“Yes, please,” she says, smiling demurely just as her mother taught her. “I would be delighted.”

“Great!” he says, bright and eager, and almost drags her to his friend. “This is Noah,” he introduces, sitting down in a messy heap, “and I’m Milo! What’s your name?”

He’s just about everything Rosalie’s mother has told her to abhor, to avoid, and yet it’s so incredibly charming that she can’t help but smile.

“Rosalie,” she says, still sweet and demure, just like she’s been taught. “I’m Rosalie.”

—————

As she gets older, she sprouts like a weed. She goes from young and clumsy and small to young and clumsy and tall, knobbly knees and painfully thin. Her bones ache, sharp and deep, and when she stands in front of the mirror she can count her ribs down her sides.

Her mother dresses her in flowing dresses and pink hair ties and pearls, clucking about how tall she is and how clumsy she is. Dresses her like the mannequin she’s treated as.

Her mother doesn’t know that she’s friends with Noah and Milo, doesn’t know that sometimes she comes home late from school because she’s been out at the arcade with them rather than at that sewing club.

Rosalie’s never felt more out of place in her own skin, like her skeleton is ready to sprout out of her skin and climb free. She doesn’t feel like a person.

But then, she never has been, to her mother.

—————

“Are you okay, Rose?” Noah asks her, one day. His eyes are dark and worried as she looks to him, and she automatically slips on that sweet smile. She’s long since figured out that if you play everything right, ply people with the right sorts of honey, people fall like stones at her feet. She’s gotten quite good at it, really.

“I’m fine,” she says, with just the right amount of flair, aimed just right to distract the eye from how skinny she is, how much her skeleton wants to break free.

“Really?” he catches her wrist, fingers wrapping around the fragile bones. “Don’t lie to me, Rose. Of everyone, please—don’t lie to me. Or Milo.”

She stares at him, silent and dark eyed. A pale ghost, held by someone so vibrant and alive that it makes her heart ache inside her aching bones. She cracks, just a little.

“No,” she admits, quietly. “But there’s nothing you can do.”

“Will you let us help?” he asks.

“...do as you will,” Rosalie says, because plausible deniability is king in her world. She cannot control them—and so, any punishment given to her for their actions is an unfair judgement.

Not that her mother will see it that way.

“Thank you,” Noah says, and smiles at her. It’s—warm. Nice.

She wants to curl up and bask in that warmth like nothing else—like sunlight, drinking it up like some starving thing. Selfish. But perhaps she can be a little selfish.

——————

Together, Noah and Milo are the lights of her world. More and more, she spends her days, afternoons, mornings with them, in the bright sunlight. They drag her away from those cold words and thoughts, and pull things from her she’d never thought she’d ever be able to say—laughter, raw and ugly and free, and the unrestrained joy of running through the fields, the streets, breathless and oh-so-happy.

Her nights are spent with her mother, where she becomes increasingly aware of one simple fact:

She is not enough. To her mother, she will _never_ be enough.

And it hurts, more than she ever thought it would.

——————

There is a fork in the path before her. One she never thought she’d have to take, but saw coming anyway.

Choose the life her mother has chosen for her—comforts and silks and ease, living life as a puppet on a string, forever an empty hall of mirrors?

Or, choose the life she has made for herself? Choose Milo, and Noah, and herself?

The familiar, or freedom?

But then, her choice was already made, long ago.

———————

The three of them fit strangely in a tiny, cramped apartment. They’re eighteen and bright-eyed, and oh-so determined to make life be whatever they want it to be.

It’s _home_.

It makes something warm and deep and too big for her chest swell inside her as she watches Milo and Noah bicker playfully about dishes and groceries and dinner.

She loves them, more than anything.  
So when one day, Milo draws her closer and presses his lips to hers, she kisses back. The next day, Milo kisses Noah, and she walks in on them pressed against the wall of the bedroom, before rolling her eyes.

“Make sure you clean the sheets,” she teases, and Milo laughs breathlessly, dragging Noah back from where he’d pulled away when she’d walked in.

“Always!”

She’s fine with it. Noah and Milo have always been a package deal—and if Milo wants to kiss her too, she’s okay with that too.

———————

A couple weeks later, Noah kisses her shyly, flushing as Milo’s bright laughter rings out from behind them.

“Took you long enough,” Milo laughs. “Gonna let me get in on this?”

They end up watching their movie, a pile of legs and arms and warmth, and Rosalie’s really too comfortable to move as Noah’s arm drapes over her shoulders and Milo’s fingers card through her hair. Home is Noah-and-Milo to her, and has been for years. It’s about time her head caught up to her heart.

———————

“I’ve been thinking,” she says one day. She’s wearing her favorite purple patterned sweater, a gift from Milo that she thinks was meant to be a gag gift—certainly, her mother would’ve hated it—but that she unironically found herself adoring. Milo looks at her, pencil behind his ear and unruly curls draping down between his shoulder blades. He’s a work of art, in her mind.

“Oh?” he tilts his head curiously. “I can’t see any steam.”

“Ah, but we haven’t made any yet,” she retorts teasingly, smiling in that sultry way she _knows_ gets to him—and, satisfyingly, it does, sending his ears pink. “But not about that,” she adds, waving one hand.

“I—“ foolishly, her heart is racing. “I don’t think I’m a girl,” she admits, very quietly. Milo watches her. “And I’m not a man either.”

After a moment, he nods. “What would you like us to call you, then?”

And of course it’s “us,” because there is no them without Noah. It’s Milo-and-Noah-and-Rose, now, etched into their bones. Noah will know as soon as he’s home from work.

“...Moss, I think,” she—they—say, before adding, “and...I think I’m a they, not a she.”

It feels _right_ , right down to their bones. Milo laughs, reaching over to cradle their face in his palm. His eyes are so warm with love that it makes their heart swell.

“Alright, Moss,” he says, pressing a kiss to their forehead. The giddy thrill of it sends them giggling, and they lean forward onto him, breathless and so, _so_ happy.

They’re Milo-and-Noah-and-Moss now. It feels like a dream come true.

————————

And then Milo Awakens, and everything changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moss is one of the characters that sprung to life so vividly in my head, and has one of the worst tragedies that the players probably aren’t going to see at all.  
> Which makes me sad, because that grief is—in part—shaped them into the fun, eccentric, manipulative asshole that they are in the campaign. They’re complicated, and have a very strong voice in my head, so exploring how they got there is interesting and fun.

**Author's Note:**

> Ross is one of those characters in the campaign that plays a role but doesn’t really show up much—he has an interesting backstory, and I wanted to get it written, since my players will probably never find out about any of this in the actual campaign.  
> He’s also a bit of a bastard, with skewed morality, but he’s _trying_.


End file.
